PETER HITCHENS: Our 'noble' cause? Dropping bombs on behalf of Al Qaeda - Mail Online - Peter Hitchens blog
PETER HITCHENS: Now we have definitely moved from being a post-war world to being a pre-war world. Madness and folly are loose again.
Hitchens is right on target (no pun intended). If you think it's great, noble, and humanistic that we bombarded Syria with Tomahawks, and are now making noises about putting together a grand coalition to bring about forcible regime change there, read this, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. Things are not (as happens all too often) as they may seem.
As I have stated previously, Assad is a dictator, a despot by Western democratic standards – but, he's also a secular ruler in a part of the world where those are rare, he's opposed to militant Islam / jihadism, and he protects the rights of women and minority religions, including Christianity (see, inter alia, "Syria and Christianity: Aleppo presents a moral dilemma for Christian leaders").
IF he is intentionally responsible for the chemical dispersal (it was only an "attack" if it was done intentionally, which is by no means certain), that is bad. But even if that is true, we made common cause with JOSEPH STALIN in WW II, for cryin' out loud! We need to figure out who our real enemies are – who is really gunning for us.
Hint: it's not Bashar al-Assad!